Right along with bad diets, stress is highly likely the biggest root cause of dysfunction, disease and early deaths in economically developed societies with decently functioning health care systems. Be it because of stress related physical or mental health effects or because of self medication due to stress getting out of control and turning into addiction.
For me managing my stress level is not only about managing negative stress but also cooling down the positive stress to create a more even sense of balance. Though the negative stress is definitely the one to truly avoid – and we’ll come back to how shortly. I just wanna start with explaining briefly why both versions can be harmful, especially in the context of being Type 1 Diabetic.
What is stress? Very simply put it’s when our body is getting ready to fight danger. Your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises and your breathing becomes faster. All this to supply your brain and other muscles with more oxygen so that they can respond and act quickly. Blood flow is prioritized to reach these body parts and is therefore reduced to other places – such as your kidneys, skin and the liver. Things like the immune system and your sexual functions are also put on low priority in order to support you to run (flight) or fight. Now in our times we rarely do run from danger, but our bodily functions remains the same. These reactions come from our brain telling the body to pump out hormones like cortisone, cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline.
As a T1D (Type 1 Diabetic) cortisol is my biggest enemy as cortisol triggers glucose to be streamed out to the blood system in order to support the brain to focus. However, glucose is essentially sugar and causes the blood sugar levels to increase. This increase is not as easy to meet with insulin injections as it is for food, (for which I normally calculate the amount based on my carb intake, for example 1 unit of insulin to 10g of carbs). I don’t have a insulin to cortisol/glucose stress reaction ratio. A prolonged stress level has an immediate impact on my body.
If you’re not T1D your functioning pancreas will take care of this and your Beta cells will produce enough insulin to balance out the glucose. However, insulin is fat binding and this then becomes one of the most common drivers for stress related overweight issues (along with eating or drinking for stress relief). A prolonged or frequently high level of cortisol in your blood is also damaging from several other aspects. So for anyone of us, stress is well worth trying our best to manage. It’s a reaction we should cherish when required but one we should train our body and mind to control. So how can we do this? I’m by no means an expert and each of us will have different needs and solutions – below are my top three tools that work for me.
Firstly, I belong to the growing crowd of meditators. I first touched it through practicing Kundalini yoga 15 years ago, but through the years my head has been in a bit of a too messy state to be with myself in silence – or so I thought. I rediscovered it through the app Headspace. This was exactly the simple approach to mindfulness and meditation that I needed to get started. Apart from habitually meditating for over a year, I’ve managed to build some mindfulness minutes into my hectic days. To close the door, plug in my headphones and play one of the 1-3 minutes guided mini sessions for restoring or focusing helps me catch my breath and slow down the stress response within seconds.
Secondly I’ve worked hard to control the time I spend working or thinking of work. Today I’m not considering my achievements as good ones unless they were achieved within decent working hours. The old mentality of hard work during long hours is not a sustainable approach. Recovery and restoration of the mind and body allows you a more qualitative output throughout the week and the months and will help you last and perform increasingly better over the years.
Now I should be recommending exercise as the last point, but that would be dishonest. I’m 200% recommending it but I can’t claim it to be my habit for de-stressing. I’m working on it though, setting myself some new goals and working to increase my healthy habits. I will share more about this in a future post.
My third tool is simply some self pampering every week. This can include just about anything enjoyable that’s either restorative or energising. Just scheduling the event gives you something to look forward to. If it’s planned with a loved one, new friends or just on your own depends upon on where you get the most energy from, are you introvert or extrovert? Never underestimate the need of giving yourself a couple of hours to get to your particular source of energy, whatever it might be for you.
Guest contributor Marielle Bostrom, this article is part of a series. Read her previous article here